


Cell

by IMAgentMI



Category: Red vs. Blue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-07
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2018-07-22 05:17:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7421443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IMAgentMI/pseuds/IMAgentMI
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the July 2016 RvB Angst War.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cell

Wash lies on what little mattress he has, his gaze locked somewhere above the ceiling in his dark cell, a death-grip on his sheets. His eyes have started to burn. He’s had them open for far too long, and one blink isn’t going to be enough now. He missed his chance, that one merciful window. 

He holds out as long as he can, feeling the surface of his eye protesting as it dries. He is going to blink any second now, he can feel it coming and is helpless to stop it, helpless to hold back the panic that swells in him. When his eyelids spasm of their own accord, he isn’t sure if the shriek he hears is out loud or merely in his head.

He flings his arms up to stop the ceiling’s descent, the crashing of his coffin’s lid. He strains to focus on the surface above his head, but even used to the dark, his tired eyes cannot find it. He is caught between two realities - the first where he lies on an ordinary bed in an ordinary cell with an ordinary ceiling, and the second an impossible nightmare of claustrophobia. He knows which is real, but terror does not listen, and his fear threatens to rip him into two ragged halves. 

With one hand still stretched above him, Wash pushes himself into a sitting position. It should have been enough to break the illusion, but his heart is still pounding, and he feels sick on adrenaline and exhaustion. He wishes he could wrap his arms around himself in a pale imitation of human contact, but the feeling of confinement might just push him over the edge and he’s already so close. 

God, his eyes. 

Eyes. 

He remembers York’s eyes, dark and light. He remembers when he found York’s body. He remembers the sick twist of guilt when he caught himself wondering if York’s eyes matched again, now that he was dead. If they were both pale and sightless and…

...looking at him.

Wash screams himself awake, but sleep has its claws in him now. He scrambles backwards over his bed until his back hits the wall, but it provides no support, just another point of contact where the last of his energy seeps away. He raises his head to have it dragged back down again, and panic slowly loses its fight with fatigue. Even his feverish panting is slowing and deepening…

Desperate, he digs his fingers into his arm, trying to ground himself with pain, but everything feels distant now. He tries his teeth, biting into the back of his hand, but he can’t bring enough pressure to even mark the skin. 

He sees his hand fall away, and he feels so lost that all he can do is follow. 

He follows someone else’s fear, blood-thick in the blackness, plain as fingerprints on glass, as footprints in snow. He follows it until he hears the screams curling the edges of his mind, someone else’s terror burning books in his memory. Someone else is gasping in the darkness, tearing open old scars. Wash finds the nightmare and lets himself in. 

The void is just another cell, even without walls, holding another madman howling his fear to the night. He gives off light like a captive star, but it does nothing to illuminate, and the darkness licks at him from all sides, drinking in his terror and pain. Wash recoils, though it has nothing to do with disgust and everything to do with fear of empathy. 

The prisoner senses him but fumbles blindly, his wordless keening shredding Wash from the inside. He’s only a memory of a memory, a piece of a shard, shrapnel so deeply embedded in Wash’s mind that it can never quite be extracted. And Wash is pushing forward, not out of compassion, not out of kindness, but because the agony they share is the same, and it draws him inexorably like a lodestone. 

Distance means nothing here, a thought is all it takes to bring them face to face. Wash doesn’t know what comfort he can give, not when they torture each other by their mere existence, but he reaches out anyway, without thought, without hope. 

The dream crystallizes around them, and they find themselves caught in stillness, entombed together in the eye of the storm. Wash would feel the tears on his face, if only he could remember what tears were, if he could feel anything outside the numbness that comes in the sudden absence of pain. The face before him is an exhausted mirror of his own, and a moment is all they have, all they can bear. 

At its end, Epsilon closes his eyes, and Wash follows.

Light breaks through, shattering the dream beyond repair. Wash hears pounding as his cell reforms around him. He blinks.

“Washington!”

He lifts his head off the mattress, then lets it fall as he rolls onto his back. The harsh cell lights drive out whatever clinging fear he might have had, and he safely closes his eyes. 

“Washington, you’re in the shower in five minutes.”

Both hands come up to cover his face and they find tears. 

“If you’re not up in five minutes, I’m bringing in a hose.” 

“I’m up.”

“You better not have pissed the fucking bed again.”

A second voice echoes in from the hall. “He really did that?”

“Yeah. I hate this detail. And the creepy fucker sleeps with his eyes open too.”

Wash sighs, piecing himself slowly back together. He finally stands, walks to the cell door. It opens, and he steps out, leaving the shards of his dream behind.


End file.
